By Jung Sung-ki

South Korean military authorities have decided to allow a local church to display Christmas lights near the border with North Korea for the first time in seven years.

The move comes as the South is stepping up its propaganda offensive against the North, following a series of deadly provocations this year, including the Nov. 23 shelling of Yeonpyeong Island near the western sea border.

The Seoul-based Yoido Full Gospel Church recently asked the military if it could set up Christmas lanterns on a steel tower on a hill at a military guard post in Gimpo, northwest of Seoul, an official at the Ministry of National Defense said.

Called “Aegibong,” the 155-meter-high hill is just three kilometers from the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas. North Korean villages can be seen with the naked eye from the top of the hill.

The lights will be switched on around Dec. 21, the official said.

The Christmas lanterns were banned in 2004 when Seoul and Pyongyang agreed to stop cross-border propaganda campaigns near the border as part of efforts to improve inter-peninsula relations.

Before 2004, numerous electric lamps had been lit on the 30-meter-high tower at Christmas and on Buddha's birthday every year.

Seoul decided to resume its propaganda operations earlier this year after a South Korean warship was torpedoed by a North Korean submarine in the West Sea. Forty-six sailors were killed in the sinking.

Immediately after the North's shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, which killed four South Koreans, the South's military sent hundreds of thousands of leaflets denouncing Pyongyang's leadership and warned it is ready to blare anti-North messages via a massive array of loudspeakers installed at the border.

“As we have resumed the anti-North propaganda war since the North's attack on the warship Cheonan, there is no reason to block the religious group from turning on Christmas lanterns there,” the official said.

The two Koreas are still technically at war as the three-year Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.